Blaise and Francisco and Juan had a yen for freedom. At first, as they started traveling north, they seemed to think Victor had been wandering through the swamp for his own amusement. They didn't expect him to know what he was doing there. "White men, they are without hope away from their towns," Blaise said.
Instead of arguing, Victor vanished. One second, he was walking along beside his new companions. The next, they went one way and he another. He didn't warn them he would do it. He just ducked off behind a barrel tree and headed off on his own.
He listened to them exclaim. Francisco swore. Juan started to laugh. "Maybe this blanco, maybe he knows something," he said.
"Maybe. Or maybe he just got lost." Blaise was as reluctant to think a white knew what he was doing as many whites would have been to give him the same credit.
Then Victor reappeared and tapped him on the shoulder. "Am I lost? Or are you?" he asked politely.
Blaise almost jumped out of his skin. "How you do that?" he demanded.
"Magic," Victor said, deadpan.
That won him more attention than he wanted. The Terranovans and the African took him literally. He wasn't sure whether they wanted to use his sorcerous talents to help them escape bondage or to kill him so he couldn't bewitch them.
"His ghost will haunt us even if we do kill him," Blaise muttered when he thought Victor was out of earshot.
Victor smiled his most enigmatic smile. That set the black and the two copperskins muttering once more. They stopped bothering him. And he soon proved he could stay with them. He also showed he knew how to hunt-and he had a flintlock rifle and a pair of pistols. He could have had all that and eyes in the back of his head without their doing him any good. Even the fiercest, most deadly warrior had to sleep sometimes.
He solved the problem by pretending it wasn't one. If he took sleeping around them for granted, they wouldn't think he was afraid to. That would give them one less reason to knock him over the head.
He hoped.
When he woke up the next morning…Well, he did wake up the next morning. Nothing else mattered.
Off in the distance, a hound bayed, and then another and another. "They're after me!" Juan blurted, his blunt-featured face going as pale as it could.
"After all of us," Francisco said sensibly.
Although Victor suspected they were after him in particular, he didn't say so. It might alarm his new companions, or they might decide he was lying. They were runaway slaves, after all. People trying to hold on to an expensive investment had good reason to hunt them with dogs. Why would anyone do such a thing to a white man, though?
The French had their reasons. Victor knew that too well. Mentioning those reasons struck him as unwise. Francisco, Juan, and Blaise might decide they could sell him to the French for their liberty. They might prove right, too.
Amazing how many people couldn't keep their mouths shut, even when their lives depended on it. Victor had never had that trouble, anyhow. "Well, we have to get away, no matter whom they're chasing," he said.
"Easy to say," Blaise replied. "Not so easy to do." As if to back him up, the hounds bayed again, on a different, more excited note. "They have our scent."
"Best thing to do, then, is to make sure they don't keep it," Victor said.
"Here there is water," Juan said. "This makes it harder for them. But harder is only harder, si?" He sounded worried.
"Let them come," Victor said. The runaway slaves stared at him. He pulled a small leather pouch and an even smaller bottle from a larger pouch on his belt. Sprinkling fine black powder from the small pouch, he explained, "This is ground pepper." He also dabbed a few drops from the bottle on the ground and the nearby leaves.
"And that?" Francisco asked.
"That is the gall from the snake called the lancehead," Victor said. "Dogs do not like it." He'd committed a serious understatement.
Francisco and Juan might not have understood how large the understatement was. Blaise did. The Negro burst out laughing. Then he took Victor Radcliff's face in his two large hands and kissed him first on the right cheek, then on the left. Sure enough, he'd had a French master.
"And now," he said, "we should get out of here. We will know when the hounds are…confused."
"We'd better," Juan said.
They hurried off to the north. The dogs' howls grew louder no matter how they hurried-four legs moved faster than two. Before too long, though, the hunting howls changed without warning to sudden, frantic yips. All the runaways laughed then. Blaise kissed Victor again. Victor could have done without the familiarity, but found he couldn't blame the black man for it.
Roland Kersauzon rode down to the coast to see how the muster was going. Cosquer might have belonged to a different world. Roland hadn't seen the sea for years, or missed it. He was, and was proud to be, a man of Atlantis, not one who looked back to Europe. He'd never been to Europe, nor did he care to go there.
When he got to the coastal settlement, he found a new reason to be unhappy. At the quays, along with ships from France and Spain and Portugal and their settlements in Atlantis and on the Terranovan mainland farther west, lay others from England and from her Atlantean colonies. War declared? No one in Cosquer worried about that, not when there was money to be made.
In high dudgeon, Roland repaired to the harbormaster's office. "War? Yes, indeed. A great pity," that worthy declared. "Would you care for a cigar, Monsieur?"
"No, thank you," Roland said icily. He had his vices, but pipeweed wasn't one of them. "I would care to know, however, why we tolerate ships of the enemy. For all you know, they are full of spies."
"Oh, I doubt it, mon vieux," the harbormaster replied. He lit his own cigar at a candle, then puffed out a cloud of aromatic smoke. "What would they need to learn of our city that they do not already know?"
"How many troops we have in it, how many ships of war, the state of our shore batteries…I could go on." Roland Kersauzon scowled at the lackadaisical official. "I am charged with defending the settlements and with carrying the war to the enemy in the north. How can I do that, pray tell, if he learns everything we aim to do before we do it?"
The harbormaster let fly with more cigar smoke. "Forgive me, but I think you are getting excited over nothing-it could be over less than nothing. If they want to fight in Europe, they are welcome to. But why should that foolishness trouble us, eh? Bad for trade, leaves hard feelings, and doesn't really settle anything anyhow. They'll just fight another stupid war in twenty years' time to fix up what they didn't get right this go-round."
Roland had the uneasy feeling that that might be so. Nevertheless, he said, "I am charged with doing as well as I can this time. That means seizing enemy ships in the harbor and preventing them from sailing to enemy ports."
"But it will cause such a disruption!" the harbormaster protested. "And the English will only do the same to our ships, so what do we gain?"
"It is a necessary military measure," Roland said. "See to it at once."
"And if I refuse?" the harbormaster asked.
"I have the authority to demand your obedience," Roland Kersauzon said softly. Perhaps because he didn't shout and carry on, the harbormaster looked stubborn and shook his head. With a sigh, Kersauzon drew one of the flintlock pistols he wore on his belt. The click when he cocked it filled the harbormaster's office. The man's eyes crossed fearfully as he stared down the bore of the weapon, which could not miss from a range of less than a yard. Still in a low voice, Roland continued, "And I will blow your stupid head off if you give me any more back talk. Is that plain enough for you?"
"You are a madman!" the harbormaster gasped, sweat starting out on his face.